"Very Short on Law and Order"

Very Short on Law and Order is an unbelievable story. The narrative of feuds, journeys, death and crime are so unreal when put in the perspective of the people involved.

One of my favorite characters from the story, “La Brie” is a classic villain. He holds grudges against the narrator for what we as readers do not understand, the reason behind it was untold and that fact portrays him to be very unjust and evil. This makes his intentions almost humorous. “La Brie” seems to be a very important figure to the plot in the beginning and we follow him closely until he quickly dies as a result of his grudge. This is an important part to the plot movement, but I expected him to be a main character throughout.

Another interesting I noticed about the story was the use of alcohol as a sign of weakness. It seems that in a lot of fictional adventure stories it is acceptable for a heroic character to drink. Except that in this story it seems that it’s the desire for alcohol that makes the characters weak. Beaver Tom was clearly a failure who couldn't even stay on his horse and the criminals wanted the peach brandy in the ambulance and Old Man Cohn lied to try to keep it.

As I think about it more I think that the theme may be the weakness of desire in general, because of the things people wanted many of them ended up worse off and sometimes dead as in the case of Big Nose George.

Big Nose George was probably the best character from this story. He was a criminal, but he had a soft spot. He didn't want the narrator (Squaw Kid) to die. I can’t see any selfish motives in saving him from La Brie, but I can’t decide whether the years after knowing Squaw Kid were ones of extreme change or not. Maybe his soft spot disappeared, but to me he just seems like a man with nothing to lose.

I absolutely loved this story. It seemed so classic and as far as I understand, it’s Andrew Garcia’s first hand experiences, which makes it so much better. I usually hate this genre, it makes me think of dumb guys chewing on weed in the west, but the character development was really effective and you could imagine what the characters mind set was and what they were supposed to look and sound like.